In 2026, the share of corporate IT workloads running on third-party providers' facilities exceeded that of in-house server companies for the first time, reaching 46%. At the same time, the average power density in racks exceeded 11 kW due to equipment modernization and the deployment of systems for working with artificial intelligence.
In 2026, the share of corporate IT workloads running on third-party providers' facilities exceeded that of in-house server companies for the first time, reaching 46%. At the same time, the average power density in racks exceeded 11 kW due to equipment modernization and the deployment of systems for working with artificial intelligence.
According to The Register, this is evidenced by the results of the Uptime Institute’s 2026 global survey, which included more than 800 data center owners and operators (more than half of them from Europe and North America).
According to the study, companies’ own server farms now account for 44% of their workloads, with another 10% remaining in unequipped IT rooms and closets. Analysts predict that by 2028, the share of third-party facilities will grow to 48%, finally displacing on-premises server rooms.
The main driver of the increase in energy demand has been AI servers and GPUs. While the baseline density excluding high-power sites is 7.8 kW (versus 7.5 kW in 2025), the overall average figure is raised to 11 kW by new data centers designed for 30 kW and even more than 100 kW per rack. Already 24% of operators have reported having racks with a capacity of 30 kW or more.
Operators are also changing their approach to equipment renewal, with some companies shortening server replacement cycles to less than 4 years in the interest of bandwidth and energy efficiency. While the number of outages has decreased for the sixth consecutive year, their financial cost has increased significantly. 71% of respondents said that their most serious outage cost them at least $100,000 (up from 57% last year).
